America’s stockpile of “Minuteman” long-range nuclear missiles are some of the most horrifying things imaginable. But the world was supposedly protected from mutual assured destruction by the “Permissive Action Links” (PALs) which required an 8-digit combination in order to launch.

The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha, however, had decided that these locks might interfere with wartime launch orders; so in order to circumvent this safeguard, they pre-set the launch code on all Minuteman silos to the same eight digits: 00000000.

The men and women running SAC in 1960 essentially put the entire planet’s population at risk by deliberately disabling the PAL safety mechanisms. Perhaps we should keep that in mind before we put too much trust in the people charged with our nation’s defense.

2 Comments:

GOOD!!!! Now it will be even easier for them to DESTROY the entire world. Since hackers have been know to access Dept. of Defense system files, maybe they can launch all our nuclear weapons now!!! Or George Bush can't remember 8 digits? WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!